


One Last Time

by cavaliere_azzurro



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Platonic Romance, Platonic business partners, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14183865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavaliere_azzurro/pseuds/cavaliere_azzurro
Summary: A close-up "analysis" of the final moments of Moulin Rouge - or, a take on what was running through Tessa's and Scott's mind as they stood in the middle of Gangneung Ice Arena.





	One Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> Up until a month ago, a) I had no idea these two even existed, b) I would've never thought about writing, least of all RPF. But they came in with their loads of cuteness and fluff and took over my mind. Everything in here is a product of my imagination; I'm only borrowing Tessa and Scott's public personas for fun.  
> The timeline is shuffled on purpose to follow both their points of view, but it probably just ended up being confusing. Apologies; my mind came up with a couple decent ideas, but it turns out my writing abilities fall short of my fantasies. I really hope you'll enjoy this anyway. Reviews, advice (e.g. kindly dissuading me from continuing) and observations are more than welcome. Also, feel free to point out any mistakes; English is not my first language, but I'm trying to improve.

_I've acted out my life in stages_  
_With ten thousand people watching_  
_But we're alone now and I'm singing this song to you_  
(Simply Red – A song for you)

"YES!"  
The international direction’s microphones catch his triumphant cry over the mad cheering of the crowd. It comes from deep within; it is all the tension and the strain built up in the last year finally finding their way out of his body, finally – _finally_ – leaving him. Leaving him onto this ice rink, in an arena packed with people screaming at the top of their lungs in excitement and joy and enthusiasm, looking straight into her eyes.

_Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place_

The invisible bubble they've created for the two of them to breathe in still stands; surrounding them, keeping out everything but them. It’s only the two of them in this moment. They’re the last ones standing – onto this rink that suddenly seems so void and vast, or in the entire world, neither could say.  
There’s no way to know if this – this heart wrenching, passionate, seemingly effortless moment of pure beauty filled with love and suffering and exertion – was enough for the gold yet. Truth be told, they don’t care. The only thing they do know is that the moment the music ends something in the air stills, and every bit of acting crumbles down to their skate-clad feet. Satine and Christian take their leave, smiling at them as they dissolve in the cold frizzling air around them – and what is left standing is Tessa and Scott.  
Blissfully, completely alone together within the space of a hug.  
Only Tessa and Scott.  
Partners and friends of twenty years, together on the ice, searching each other's face with a bewildered expression for a confirmation that they're not dreaming, that all of this is true – and when they find it, their eyes get wider, and wider, and the emotions they've kept bottled up for so long finally let loose.

_Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace_

"YES!" Scott cries, face red for the exertion, as he skates a few feet away from Tessa in utter, complete disbelief of what they just did. He can't believe just mere seconds ago he was holding her into his arms for the last movement of their choreography; everything feels like a dream.  
He lets go of her at once, as if he's been burnt. He suddenly needs space, needs some sort of physical _distance_ from her, to be able to see her whole figure, not just fragments – her green, _gorgeous green eyes_ ; her shaking, glowing smile – so that he can etch all this in his memory; Tessa, clad in a scarlet dress that enhances her every curve and angle; her eyes – wider and greener than ever – trained on him; her slender hands going up to her mouth to cover the sound he's been itching to hear again for the past eight years.  
Tessa, a brushstroke of color against a white background.  
Tessa, more beautiful than he's ever seen her. 

_Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste_

_When I'll be eighty-something and won't even remember my own name, I'll remember_ this. And as this stray thought strikes him, he feels the need to check for himself that _she's real, she’s my Tess and this is not a dream, we're really here, together._  
His feet move of their own command.  
There are so many things that come as an instinct after twenty years of skating – of skating with someone –, and directing your steps towards the other, having the other in mind with every move you make, is one of them. So Scott skates back the few steps he just put between them and – as another incredulous cry escapes his lips – scoops Tessa up into his arms; hugging her so fiercely, so tightly, with so much pride and joy and love, he fears they might explode.

_It all revolves around you_

(Tessa isn’t one for explosions. She sees herself as a composed and reflective person, someone who quietly shies away from gut feelings and displays of strong emotions as much as she can. There is, however, one circumstance when none of this applies anymore – the rink. Or, if she were completely honest with herself, the one person she’s ever hit the rink with. In there, with him, she changes in such an imperceptible way she thinks no one notices. _No one but Scott_ , of course. Scott notices everything about her.)  
When the last notes of _Come what may – how beautiful and sad_ , she muses as his hands bring her back to a standing position – fall gracefully onto them, she finds herself looking into a pair of brown eyes she knows so well she could describe them down to the smallest speck of gold. They have always been a window open onto Scott’s soul; everything he is is in his eyes, especially when he's overwhelmed with emotions and she can see every single one of them pass through his chocolate orbs.  
Internalizing his emotions and analyzing them may have become second nature to her; she may have gotten good at picking up on the slightest swings in his mood by the telling signs of his body; she may even have gotten to the point where she can sense his thoughts and feelings flow through his hands, in the way they move, in the way they grasp and hold. But nothing, _nothing_ , could ever come close to this – boring into his eyes with her own, getting lost into the countless rooms and caves of his soul.  
He’s built a home for himself in his own mind, a home he trusted her with the keys to all those years ago. She knows that, if she were so inclined, she could wander through it all she wanted (and if she did so, she’d find that every single room sports sturdy walnut furniture, a warm, crackling fire and, for some reason, something green).  
But she’s not one to misuse someone’s trust in her, and especially his. (How could she deceive her own heart?) So she lets herself in to his soul only when she’s sure he’s willingly laying his heart out for her to see; she lets herself drown into those pools of unwavering reassurance and affection only when she can’t do any different – those moments when the entire world gathers in his eyes, and his eyes become her entire world.  
Moments just like this; when time stops going by and they hug as tightly as they can while his hands fiddle with her still perfectly in place bun, before he squeezes her one more time and then, suddenly, lets go of her at once. 

_And there’s no mountain too high_

If she were anyone else, she'd probably be puzzled; but she's so _not_ anyone else. She knows him just as well as he does her – _better than I know myself_. So she easily lets him out of her arms, a part of her hidden deep within realizing that he's doing this for both of them. Because he's overwhelmed, for one, but also and foremost because he knows that _she_ needs some space too, even if she won't admit it. Because he knows she's too shocked to do anything but stand there, unable to tear her eyes off him.  
They haven't spent the last twenty years on and off the ice together for nothing. They can read each other's mind most of the time, and this becomes easier when they can't get a firm grip on their thoughts. Her eyes ( _please don't pop out of my head_ ) remain glued on him as he lets out a cry that contains all the tension and the anxiety and the pressure they've felt for the past year; and a shiver runs deep down her spine because she knows there's both of them in that cry, because _he's doing that for himself and for_ me.

_No river too wide_

And in that moment, seeing him – Scott, her Scott, pour their hearts out onto the ice between them –, something springs inside her. A sound that she didn't know she could make comes out of her mouth; a sound that is a full-blown laughter and a strangled cry at the same time, that spreads in circles from her and echoes back ( _how odd_ ) over the deafening noise of the crowd.  
It reaches him as he stands back up again, and the expression on his face says it all – puzzlement, incredulity; pure, unadulterated happiness. _We did it_ – _it's over_ – _we_ did _it!_

_Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side_

After twenty years of skating – of skating with someone –, so many things come as an instinct. One of them is to prefigure what the other is about to do a split second before they themselves do.  
So when Tessa's mouth lets out the first sign of that mixture of laughter and cry he hasn't heard since Vancouver, Scott launches himself at her without any conscious thought.  
So when Scott is about to close the distance between them once again, Tessa opens her arms for him to step into without any conscious thought.  
Her skates are lifted off the ground and she puts everything she's feeling right now – elation, disbelief, love – into that second, triumphant hug, knowing that Scott will feel all these emotions run straight through her body. His face pressed into her shoulder, her arms closing around his head in a soft cradling motion, she hugs him as tightly as she can.

He feels every wave of barely kept in check emotion flow from her, wash onto him like a warm golden liquid. He can feel her happiness tingling on his own skin as fairy dust ( _my personal Tinkerbell_ ), and it's _the best feeling I’ve ever had_.  
He wants this moment to last forever. To hold her like this; unabashedly happy, her smile trembling under the pressure of tears one hair away from spilling and her hands that softly brush his face saying everything she can’t – forever.  
But he knows that's not the way it works; moments exist to come and pass. So he puts her down and lets her out of his arms, his gaze steadily fixed on hers as yet another liberating cry gushes out of him. He can’t stop his hands from flailing around a little, and he watches in ecstatic awe as a spark of unbridled amusement lights up her eyes all over again.

_Storm clouds may gather_

A moment later, however, that joyous flicker in Tessa’s glimmering orbs transforms into something else entirely; something she doesn’t even know is there and that drips out onto the ice at their feet, threatening to swallow them in, to crush them down.  
He’s learned a long time ago not to trust her smile nor her words – it is her forest green eyes that mirror her soul; many a times, he suspects, beyond her own will or even awareness.  
He sees something akin to sadness slowly creep and settle in the back of her orbs; and as he witnesses this almost undetectable coat of uncertainty spread out in the farthest end of those green clearings, it suddenly hits him that this is _it_ ; that this – the two of them, panting and sweating, two blots of color against the whiteness of the ice – is _so beautiful and sad_ , as he remembers her saying to him one time during practice.  
_So beautiful and sad, just like her eyes now._

_And stars may collide_

The excitement wears off all at once.  
Tessa knows – years of training to become an Olympiads-worthy athlete teach you this, among other things – it’s not true; that’s not how the human body works. Adrenaline levels decrease gradually.  
Still, when Scott lets go of her again and his mouth gives way to another, quieter ( _exhausted_ ) cry, she suddenly feels – _empty_. She doesn’t know what to do with her body anymore. Self-consciousness is about to grip her in its claws and, as a faraway part of her brain registers her arms falling limp to her sides, her eyes – _gorgeous green eyes_ , she remembers Scott murmuring in her hair, confident she wouldn’t hear it – search his for some kind of – _grounding_.

_But I love you_

And grounding her he does, raising his hand in wait on a high-five; a tradition that started when they were kids and that has changed along with them through the years, gradually dropping the complex sequences they’d use to rile themselves up before a competition in favor of something infinitely simpler and closer to their hearts.  
_Quite literally_ , Tessa muses as she’s once again enveloped in a pair of strong arms. It feels like neither of them wants to break contact, needing to feel the other’s presence as an anchor in this sea of conflicting emotions. Needing to feel _home_.  
The disembodied voice of the speaker announcing their names snaps them out of the impending misery and of the bubble they’ve been wrapped in like a familiar, soft blanket until now. Its frail pale filaments abruptly tear apart, giving way for the uproar of the crowd to finally reach their ears. They shake their head almost in unison to clear their mind, a nonplussed look taking over their faces at finding themselves where they are – in the middle of an ice arena full of people standing and cheering them.  
Their hands react quicker than they do, thanks to the tactile memory that comes as second nature by now, after more than twenty years of tuning their body to that of the other. (The beautifully unusual ways in which their hands react and communicate are one of the little miracles that make Scott forget how to breathe properly every single time.) They reach out for one another and move to the center of the rink, bowing once, and twice, and then once more.

_(I love you)_

Tessa’s head seems to be moving on its own; it shakes in disbelief, the same way her hands are shaking; Scott feels her left hand tremble in his firm grip. He brings his hand up to his heart only a beat after she’s done the same, his eyes immediately searching for her again. He turns to her and a loving smile forms on his lips as he takes her in – her eyes twinkling madly, that sound between a laugh and a cry coming out from her lips –; and he suddenly realizes, in the middle of an Olympic ice rink surrounded by thousands of people, that his heart stopped beating within his chest a long time ago. It beats outside of him, because this woman who's standing beside him is his heart.  
He can feel the need for a little bit more closeness than usual coming off of her in waves; a need so overwhelming she gives in to it and reaches out to him in between bows, searching his hands and grasping them tightly. He steadily holds her gaze; it's as raw and fragile as he's never seen it, and the image of a glass ballerina they once saw at a flea market crosses his mind. It's such a rare occurrence, even for him, to see Tessa like this, so open and unguarded, that it takes his breath away every single time.  
"I love you," his mouth gives way to the words before he can even think about it, and again his voice matches that of Nicole Kidman as it plays out of the speakers one more time. He looks at her intently, hoping to convey everything he can't say in what he just said, in his hands, in his eyes. Her green orbs dilate (later, he'll realize those were the first words they exchanged after the skate was over), and he'd swear her entire face breaks into the biggest of smiles.  
They turn around to greet the crowd with one last bow, and that’s when they spot their families waving and beaming at them. They wave and beam back, matching affectionate smiles emerging on their faces as they realize the ones they love most were there to witness them dance one last time, giving everything they had.  
Finally, after what seems like ages and seconds at the same time, they start to skate at slow pace towards the exit.

_Until the end of time_

_And time has no end_ , Tessa absentmindedly muses as her feet carry her across the rink without requiring any conscious effort on her part. She supposes it’s true, at least to an extent. Time cannot be stopped, bent, rolled back – it just is, always; indifferent, unchanging. Right now, she’d give anything – _anything_ – to do each and any of these impossible things.  
She’d roll back time to a number of moments (she has an ongoing list she started writing down one time she got a little tipsier than usual). She’d go back to when they met. To when they were teenagers. To that moment when the last notes of Mahler settled down at their feet and she felt his mouth move against her skin as he said _thank you so much_. To when they actually ranked second and realized they had foreseen it. To when they decided to go back to competing. To when they danced to the _Moulin Rouge_ soundtrack in his kitchen for the first time. To a bunch of minutes ago.  
She’d bend time to be less shy, so that he wouldn’t feel like he had to talk for the two of them. To be more patient, so that he wouldn’t feel so clumsy around her he sometimes wouldn’t even make eye contact and would ditch his harshness towards her. To wear her heart on her sleeve like he’s always done, so she’d hug him – 23-years-old, face glowing with utmost, childlike joy him – tightly and thank him back. She’d bend time to comfort him after Sochi; to reassure him he wouldn’t let her down if he didn’t feel up to go back to competing. To ask him why it was that _Come what may_ made him think of her. To be the one singing Satine’s part.  
She’d stop time to prevent this moment ( _this exact moment_ ) – Scott’s elated smile; the flicker of disbelief in the back of his eyes that disappears as his gaze lands softly upon her, replaced with something else she can’t quite place; the years that have laid the thinnest of veils over his face, the scars and lines on these fierce and yet delicate hands she’d recognize anywhere – from ever ending. To still him like this; completely, unabashedly happy, in a space outside of time. And as her eyes drank him in, she’d slide down to a sitting position on the cold ice and she’d just – _stay there, and never get tired of looking at him._

_Come what may_

_What a fitting line_ , Scott briefly ponders in between bows to the crowd whose cheers have sustained him through this last dance on the ice with Tessa.  
He feels like he’s going out of air; the repeated motion of moving his upper body up and down is oddly making him dizzy. It doesn’t even cross his mind that his body is used to much worse and keeps up with his training more than fairly well for his thirty years; it doesn’t occur to him that this uneasiness settling in the pit of his stomach is his most carefully hidden fears and doubts finding a way out.  
Out of the corner of his eye he sees her reaching out for him ( _so not Tessa_ ) and complies, his hands meeting hers in the still air between them with practiced ease. It feels like breathing again.  
_No matter what, we’re together_ – his own words resonate through the years, and he can see them plain as day in Tessa’s emerald orbs as she beams at him. It’s that beautiful, authentically Tessa smile she only rarely smiles, that makes her eyes twinkle like the brightest of stars and his knees go weak. _It’s for_ me – _that smile’s for me._  
And as she twirls her hand in his for a last bow, it dawns on him that he couldn’t care less about the score or the color of the medal, and he couldn’t care less about the strenuous hours ( _years_ ) of training it took them to get here. _‘d do that all over again without so much as a thought_ if it meant that he got to share his life with Tessa as he’s done for the past twenty years. All he cares about – all he’s _ever_ cared about – is here, beside him, eyes glinting with unshed tears of happiness and a smile that lights up his entire world. 

_I will love you until my dying day_

Little sparkles of light start appearing in his vision and he realizes that it’s probably time for them to vacate the rink; he couldn’t say how long they’ve been standing here, but he guesses long enough, given that the speaker is announcing their names again.  
He starts skating at a slow pace towards the exit, still holding Tessa’s hand in a firm grip ( _like a lifeline_ ) and prompting her to follow him. He loves this handhold – her slender hand closing around his thumb, her pinkie in between his pointer and middle finger, his hand wrapping around hers. Their hands fit in each other’s like a glove. Whenever they hold hands like this, even though he couldn’t pinpoint why, he feels _safe_ , and he can feel in her touch that she feels the same way. It’s a handhold they find themselves reverting to whenever they feel the need for some kind of reassurance, in those moments when either of them feels vulnerable.  
As they skate towards Patrice and Marie-France he can feel her body curl up into him, trying to shy away from the noise all around them and possibly from everything she’s feeling right now. Her head finds what he thinks of as _its place_ on his shoulder for a moment, and his own turns to her by instinct as her free hand strokes his arm in soft, steady motions.  
A silent reminder – her way of telling him, _be with me._  
_One last time_.  


One last turning back to etch every detail of this magic moment in their memory, and then - _then who knows. It all boils down to this - the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. The two of us - come what may._


End file.
